How one atheist sees life

It’s not often that I agree with another atheist. Mostly because how I think of life is not fluffy and white. It’s bleak and harsh. Julian Baggini has hit the nail on the head with this post

So I think it’s time we atheists ‘fessed up and admitted that life without God can sometimes be pretty grim. Appropriating the label “heathen” is part of this. Heathens are unredeemed outcasts from heaven who roam the planet without hope of surviving the deaths of their bodies. They may have values but they are not secured by any divine source. Yet we embrace this because we think it represents the truth. And so we don’t just get on and enjoy life, we embark on our own intellectual pilgrimages, trying to make some progress in a universe on which no meaning has been writ. The journey can be wonderful but it can also be arduous and it may end horribly. But there is no other way, and anyone who urges you to follow a path that they promise leads to a bright future is either gravely mistaken or a charlatan.

Truth is necessarily harsh. It cannot be soft-balled. I’m quite happy to see another person printing the truth. Life is, it sucks, so just be. Nobody chose to be here, we have only the choice of when to leave. Every day is a struggle. If it was easy we’d be bored. No, we’re not done. We need to get on with the program of dominating the galaxy then the universe. While we sit idle on this water world, we waste our time. The more time we waste on creator gods the less time we have to be who we truly can be.

Like this:

This post might take some thinking, some reflective thought. I hope that it does.

We’ve all done it. Played along to get along. The game of life, all that crap you do every day so that you can rush around in some strange place for a week or two, burning through all your savings, so that you can tell everyone what a wonderful time you had while you weren’t doing all that crap you do every day.

Game:

a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.
synonyms: pastime, diversion, entertainment, amusement, distraction, divertissement, recreation, sport, activity

We don’t always realize it. Graduate from school not sure what we’re going to do and the next thing you know you are caught up in trying to pay your bills and meet the requirements of being human. Eat, sleep, fornicate, drink, breathe… in any order that you like. Lather, rinse, repeat. Our interests distract us and we become overburdened just trying to meet the 5 requirements, the 5 necessary things that our bodies demand we do. Sure, some of us try to ignore them or do too much of one or more of them, but in the end we’ll do all 5. Our biology ensures that this will be. That’s it. The 5 requirements of mammalian life, and it appears that it applies to all forms of life that we know of.

Most of us will find that even if the 5 are satiated and no more difficult to acccomplish than opening our eyes each morning, something else is missing. Something else needs to be done. Those 5 just simply are not enough.

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a fairly smart guy. What could that demon be? How are your demons today? What is true must be true for the best of us and the least of us. That demon has to be able to affect all of us, from the greatest human to the lowest worm. Thought of it yet? Think harder. Fear. Fear is the demon. Fear that we will not accomplish one of the 5 requirements now or in the future. Our biology drives us this way. It tells us to be afraid, makes us react whenever something, at its core, will stop us from doing one or more of those 5 things for too long. There it is, the five laws and the only demon we all share. Think about it for a bit. All the rest of human society and culture is based on these things, built up layer upon layer of complexity until we no longer recognize it. So many layers of complexity that we have thought ourselves more than animals for a long time, looking down upon those that do the five with much greater efficiency than ourselves.

So many are sure that the world, that life is an illusion yet you are certain that your world and your life are real. Your mind will tell you many things in your life. That inner voice, your subconscious twin. It will tell you what beauty is, what it is not and it will tell you that the limb you used to have is still there. Can you truly know that it’s missing or not if your mind tells you so stealthily? Your mind interprets all the data that it can find and tells you what the world is, what society is, and what they are not. Who are you talking to when you talk to yourself. Who answers back when you reflectively seek answers to problems in this illusion of life? Do you have a twin inside your mind?

When you tell yourself that you’ve done the best you can for today do you hear a reply? There is much to think about. Will both of you agree on what the answers are? Will you both even conclude that there are answers? If there are no answers, then what? What if the big questions have no answers? Oh, there’s that demon again. Now the argument with your twin begins in earnest. One of you dared ask “why are we here?”, “For what purpose are we here?” The wisest among us end such argument with the simple thought that it does not matter, here we are and here we will remain until someone figures out how to change that. The luckiest among us never ask the questions, they simply get on with the business of being. Once we ask our twin that kind of question all sorts of mayhem follows.

We worship ideals that we have deified, accepting the wisdom of this illusion because our ideal dictates to us what we must need do, how it is that we make sense of the world we cannot be part of. No, you are your mind and it will never touch or taste or smell the world around you. It does not have those abilities. It simply crunches data and models the world around you. Sure it has sensors but your mind will never know what a rose smells like, really know. It will never know the color of a juicy apple, never really know. All it, all that you will ever know is an approximation of what the world is like. You and your twin are trapped inside a skull. Yes, it is _your_ skull but it’s no better than any other skull. It just happens to be the one wrapped around the brain that your mind is in, that you are in.

You will never be closer to the world than some electrical signals tell you that you are. If we live in a simulation you will never know because whether it’s a simulation or just nerves bringing you sense data, your brain will interpret that data as reality. When you have a ‘reality’ the game begins. By the time you were 2 years old the game had begun. The day you were born, not so much.

It’s a game. Complex, scary, difficult. Still, it’s just a game. It’s the only game there is. Even that is complex for you can create a game within the game, play by your own rules in that part and by the other rules in other parts. The rules get complicated, layer upon layer of rules. What if you don’t want to play? What if you want to simply be? Can you step outside the game? Can you stop playing and still meet the 5 requirements? What would it be like to be outside the game?

Oh, that’s a lot of questions for you and your twin to talk about. I wonder what answers you’ll come up with? I wonder if you’ll share them here?

There are times when we find ourselves alone. Those times are judged not by how we survive it but by how we relish in it. We are born alone, we walk alone, and we will die alone for no other can be in our minds with us. For me this is a deeply held belief, a mantra, a reality check.

Oh, we all have the voice inside us that we talk to so we’re never really alone. The two people in your head are always together, like twins sharing the same thoughts. Just the same, life will leave us in a state where we are alone. From inside our heads, away from the world – outside of it, the world is just a game. When I am alone I am the only one in existence, the only reality. The rest of it? The rest of it can burn and I’m bringing marshmallows.

I’ve walked a long way and for a long time, across scorched earth. Keeping myself warm on the dying embers of the world around me. My voice and I have run amok, just to be there to watch the fire burn. It doesn’t matter what’s burning, it doesn’t matter what some think it’s worth. Burn it must because it’s just a game. From this side of the fire I’ve never met anyone else. I’ve been alone here for eternity.

I’ve been searching for someone, anyone but gave up, fearing there were none to be found. Here, in this place, a person has to have matches and be ready to make smores. Entertainment is free if you’re a pyro. Let it burn. Still, I found someone here amongst the embers and flames.

Now there is a third voice. I no longer walk completely alone. It might kill me but I like the company here among the embers.

Who in your world sees the embers of it burning? Who in your world would light the world on fire to keep you warm? Who in your world could banish the cold and lonely, drink a toast with you and watch it burn? Who in your world is that third voice, faint as it might some days seem? No third voice? Let it burn.

I think that I’ll start this with an apology that Part 1 is and will remain private.

I am a philosophical nihilist, monist, materialist, anti-theist, atomist and so on. There are those that think such people have no moral compass or reason to live and so on. I stand here in sharp contrast to those people’s ideas.

The truth of the matter is that there is no intrinsic meaning or purpose to life and further that even those who think there is make up their own meaning to their lives. They just pretend it is about something else that none of us can see or test.

Despite the confusion over what these labels mean and what a person of these labels may or may not be or feel, I have deeply held beliefs. One of those deeply held beliefs is that the only thing we have is our experiences, our memories. These are all that we carry with us no matter where we go and no matter our situation in life. These things are intrinsically part of who we are. They _are_ important. As such, I am not averse to experiencing everything I can … even if it is painful or hurtful or harmful. To truly know what life is and what it means to be alive I believe that you have to experience it. I don’t think that selectively choosing what to experience is being in control of yourself. No, facing those experiences with the gusto of Hercules is being in control. You can’t say that you know what a hurricane is like till you’ve weathered one out. Life gives us hurricanes here and there. I try to face them, revel in it, languor in the experience of it.

Another firmly held belief I hold is that it is not possible to truly hold an understanding of what it means to be alive unless you have shared moments of compassion with another life. To accept and show compassion to another life, big or small, is to understand the reality of possibilities in connecting with another being. We live, trapped in our minds, visited only by vague impulses that render for us some representation of what it is like outside our minds. To connect with those senses to another mind at some level of compassion is a vital experience. One that we should not miss out on.

DARK CORNERS

Very recently I was given just such a hurricane experience. It appeared suddenly and I had no time to prepare. From content and safe to swallowed by the storm. I told myself that I would stand and watch it, weather it out, experience it. When it fell upon me in full force I ran for cover. I found a dark corner and I hunkered down and hid, hoping it would lessen, that the storm would fizzle out some how. It was not to be so. There I huddled against the cold comfort of my former bravery, in the dark and lashing out at anything that came near me.

RAGE

As I prepared for the rage of the storm I became angry. Why do I have to experience this? Why can anyone or anything take away from me a friend that I have shared moments of compassion with? What gives them a right? What did I do to the universe that I must experience this pain and grief? Why is it necessary that my friend must die? Why? I became angry. I filled with rage and wanted to go berserk. I wanted to be the storm, I wanted to be more powerful than the storm. And so I raged… I felt it fully. I wanted to kill. I wanted to rampage and leave carnage and death in retaliation for the storm.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

— Dylan Thomas

I was not stronger than the storm. I could not rage enough. I could not make it go away.

Part 2: The Eulogy

Today I lost my friend. A dear friend of 16 years. He never let me down, always spoke in ways to cheer me and sooth the angers of living in the game of life. He was one of my reasons to live at one time, he helped me through many tough times. Speaking just enough to let me know how much he cares. He supported me with all that he was, always ready to show his pleasure at being near me. He was, is, my friend.

I held his weakened body in my arms, spoke in soothing sounds to calm him.

As the first plunger sent him to sleep, no longer able to make soothing sounds, my chest began to heave.

As the second plunger slowed his heart my arms began to shake, my tears unnoticed by his stilled eyes.

I was born alone, I walk alone, and I will die alone. I know that in the grand scheme of the universe my life is no more important than that of my friend. I feel pain and grief and ANGER that such can pass with so very few people even giving a damn. My life will pass as well. It will end and I will be no more important to the world than my friend was as I held him today.

I have experienced this anger today for the second time in my life. It opened a dark place that I must now climb out of, to find respite from the game of life. I will miss my friend. He was never in the game with me, always waiting outside for my arrival. I will miss him like I would miss a finger. It is fair and right and normal that his life must come to an end. Even normal that I should experience the pain and grief. That didn’t make it fun. He was my friend. I am partly who I am because of him. He is part of my experience, part of my memory. He is important. Even if not one other person feels the same anger, pain, and grief, I will. I cannot be me without the memories and experiences of my friend.

I’m sorry if anyone felt the anger of my grief. I am not sorry that I grieve. I must grieve for a part of who I am no longer is. A part of me stopped existing today. Frozen in the vault of memories in my mind. I am better for both the memories and compassion and for the experience of knowing him and losing him. I am alive. His last breath was spent telling me that I am.

I’ve not claimed to know everything in the world. I have claimed that my understanding of it is a little different than what I read from others. That difference is what this blog is about. In this post I’m about to rip into a believer’s post about god and gay marriage and their thoughts on such. I don’t care who this author is or what their actual motivation is. I care what they said because that is what the public hears and what influences others. Perhaps this author has no real audience so is impotent in this regard but perhaps they do. In either case it is important that there be discussion. What follows is my one sided discussion of thethoughts of this author. You don’t have to like it. I’m not writing here for popularity. This post is not because I’m an angry atheist but because posts like this make this anti-theist angry.

I’m not going to quote the entire post (but did anyway) so if you want to read the whole thing, it is here.

After a conversation I had the other day, I realized that the biggest questions that skeptics have about Christianity in our day concern homosexuality.

Our author is clearly now well informed. So how should we treat their opinions if they clearly are uninformed? Trash them? Ignore them? Perhaps we should take the high road and give them a chance to speak? I go for the latter because it gives us much more reason to simply dismiss them outright next time.

How could a God that says that He is love incarnate oppose a marriage between two people who claim to love one another? The question is such a difficult one and it is so widespread that I have decided that I must offer my best understanding of this issue to those who are genuinely seeking answers.What makes the question so difficult? It is not difficult because it is intellectually difficult, it is difficult because the question hits every human being where we live. Sex is the greatest gift given to us by God and the idea of doing as we think best is tremendously attractive to sinful human beings. For this reason, God’s rules are going to be at their most unpopular when they tell us to restrict our sexual behaviour in ways that are not easy to understand. Jesus Christ would have been enormously popular had he said, “It is a tough world out there, just do the best you can to live a happy life.” Unfortunately, he said “If you love me, keep my commands” and this can be very difficult. One of the clearest commands in the Old and New Testament prohibits homosexuality.

This presupposes a priori knowledge that sex was given to us by a god. We assume that sex was also given to animals so when animals are not heterosexual they must be acting in the nature that the creator god gave them. From this point on you can dismiss this author’s words and thoughts. The author assumes that the holy text of Christianity is the word of their god and as such is without reproach. For this reason alone you can also dismiss everything this author says. He talks about commands of the god who no person has ever seen. Oh sure, Moses saw his ass but that’s it, you won’t find anyone of credit saying that the stories of Moses in the Christian bible are accurate except those that believe on faith alone. Not even Jewish scholars and archaeologists. Think about that for a minute.

Because the number one attack that is going to be levelled against anyone who dares to speak out on this issue is that they are callous and hard-hearted and don’t love homosexuals or understand what they have gone through, I am going to start by explaining my background. I am not a successful heterosexual who was brought up in a Christian home and who has no experience with the pain of loneliness. Rather, I am a 47 year-old who has never been married, who has rarely dated and only had sex a dozen times in my entire life. I was a hardcore pornography addict before the Lord finally delivered me from that completely about a year and a half ago. I know what it is to be lonely, miserable and suicidal and I have enormous sympathy for those who reject God’s perfect standard because it seems too painful. I have even written a post where I have tried to minimize the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality and I have wrestled with divine severity in this regard for years. Having said all of that, I have come to believe that obedience to God’s commands regarding sexuality is essential for God’s purpose and I am going to attempt to explain why.

Well, there’s a ringing endorsement of the power of prayer if EVER I saw one. Not only did prayer and his Jesus get him away from pornography but they made him a successful heterosexual…. oh, wait. A 47 year old with practically no sexual experience is about to give us sexual guidance from the book he probably hasn’t read from cover to cover yet. I can’t wait! Bonus points, he is going to explain his god’s purpose to us.

Sexual Brokenness in Our Society

The first thing we need to understand when we consider this issue is the fact that sexual intimacy is absolutely, completely and horrifically broken in our society today. To see this ubiquitous brokenness, consider how widespread abortion, paedophilia, pornography, divorce, rape, homosexuality and gender confusion are in our society. Now I would never suggest that sexuality has ever been handled perfectly in any fallen society, but anyone with a shred of honesty would have to agree that our society has become almost entirely sexually dysfunctional. Where did this sickness come from? While an in-depth discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this post, let us just say that the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960’s introduced a “dog eat dog” competition into the most intimate and vulnerable relationships that human beings have and this poison has been slowly destroying our ability to be intimate and vulnerable with one another ever since. (See “Beautiful Propaganda, Ugly Reality” and “God’s Purpose for Sex” for more discussion on sexuality.)

The reason that it is important to understand that our society is horrifically sick is that those who support homosexual marriage act as though the only alternative to it is a life of loneliness and despair. In this way, they reject God because they believe He created homosexuals to be absolutely miserable. Nothing could be further from the truth than this hideous lie. The essence of understanding God’s attitude toward homosexuality is understanding precisely that God wants something vastly superior to anything we can imagine or think for each and every human being. God calls homosexuality an abomination because this lifestyle prevents large numbers of people from attaining the true joy and love that God wants for all of us. To understand this, let us think this through one step at a time.

Ok, so sexual superstar believes that sexual intimacy is broken beyond repair. He’s had 12 encounters in 47 years, about one every 2.5 years of adulthood. He is undoubtedly an expert. This paramour of the ages knows exactly what his god wants for us and it is something that is vastly superior to anything we can imagine or think… yet he is able to do just that. What wondrous luck we have to have found his writings. The rest of his post has the portents of revelation, I can just feel it. Yes, I’m not gay or lesbian so I must be lonely and in despair. I’m getting the feeling that if you punch this guy in the head there will be a ringing sound. Wait, he’s giving us a step by step guide so let’s continue

The Nature of Love

Now in the opening paragraph I used some language that many homosexuals and their supporters found offensive. I said that homosexuals “claim to love one another” instead of that homosexuals genuinely do love one another. The reason I used this wording, however, is because it is important for us to understand that the most amazing human love still falls very short of the perfect divine standard. We human beings think that we love another, but when you look at our best relationships from the divine perspective you see that even the best human loves fall woefully short of the genuine article. Consider the following verses:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)

As I have shared in a number of other posts, God’s plan for mankind is the heaven that is only possible if every human being has the perfect love described above for every other human being on the planet. If one considers the real behaviour of the human beings around us, one quickly comes to the realization that heaven is absolutely impossible. Selfish and self-centred human beings are, quite simply, incapable of the kind of love that would make heaven possible. What is God to do if he wants to create heaven and populate it with human beings?

So this guy knows what the divine perspective is? Whether he thinks it has been revealed to him or that he found it in the good book doesn’t matter. To know the mind of a god is not possible by all the accounts of the attributes of such beings. He even knows what makes heaven impossible. We are truly privileged here. He’s going to tell us the nature of love and cannot define it. In fact nobody can define it precisely. That is one of the problems with the word love – there is no precise definition. Go on, I dare you to define it for us.

Loving Others with Divine Help

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)

The keys to human beings living in paradise is obtaining divine help to love other people. The Bible teaches us that with God’s help we can die to ourselves and learn how to love other people. The keys to this process are a faith that trusts God even when we don’t understand his command and an obedience that attempts to do things which are absolutely impossible within the confines of our limited humanity. Faith is important because it allows us to transcend the limitations of our own understanding, our imperfect attempts at obedience demonstrate our faith and are essential so that God can guide us toward the correct path.

Okay, so the key is to trust what we can’t understand, something that rapists would like to tell their victims. Further that we obey even when it is impossible to do so. He further states that we use faith to ignore all the warning signs we see in this. We have to fuck up so his perfect god can guide us. So much for omnipotence. To summarize so far, you’re fucked, sexuality is fucked, everything is fucked but you have to have faith because … god.

A Glimmer of Hope

Over the course of my 21 years of Christian life, I wrestled with pornography until God finally gave me complete victory over this sin about a year and a half ago. When I think about the many years of struggle against my sexual sins and lusts, an obvious question arises. “Was it worth it?”

As I consider this question, I think about a number of my beautiful sisters in Jesus Christ whom I love and with whom I have genuine friendship. Before I became a Christian and for many years thereafter, these relationships would not have been possible. At that time, I had no control over my sexuality and my lusts. These lusts and ugly thoughts would have prevented me from forming genuine bonds with these women by distracting me from the things that really matter. Was it worth it to kill these lusts and ugly thoughts within myself through 20 years of struggle and sacrifice? Experiencing the joy of freedom from sin and lust and the friendship that it makes possible, I can unequivocally say that love and freedom are absolutely worth the sacrifice.

Okay, sexual superstar says he can’t control his lusts. He’s a moron, apparently, not capable of self control. He’s finally found some kind of self control and tells us that this is because of a god. Well the rest of us with self control just think this guy is a fucking idiot. Just the same it’s nice of him to tell us he has so little self control. How is one to trust anyone that has so little self control? Who knows but he’s going to continue on telling us what is wrong with the rest of the world.

Doubts and Reservations

Now some people may look at the Christians they see around them and express some doubts and reservations. “No offence”, they might say, “but the Christians around me and those I read about in history don’t seem to be that much more loving than other people. This path to eternal life and love doesn’t seem very credible.” This is only one of the many valid questions that one may ask on one’s Christian journey. Though the questions may seem fatal at first glance, I believe that satisfactory answers can be found if one searches the Scriptures and prayerfully seeks an answer and this website is dedicated to sharing the answers to those questions that I have found in my own journey. (See, for example, my answer to the above question in “The After Action Report“.)

Well, at least he admits there are credible questions. He doesn’t provide any answers despite the fact that he knows the will of his god. In fact he hasn’t shown himself to know much of anything but I bet you can get some good recommendations for porn sites from him. He doesn’t seem very determined to fix the sexual brokenness that society suffers from. In fact, he’s offered nothing which would help fix sexual problems in society. He’s just blathering on about how his god’s divine plan is awesome but hasn’t even said what that is. Moron. That’s the label I give this guy.

Conclusion

Any rational human being who is aware of their own faults and sees the world as it is knows that human beings do not have anything close to perfect love. Any rational human being who has known the fleeting joy that is possible when human beings enjoy genuine friendship and love knows that an eternal life of perfect love would be heaven and is worth any extreme of sacrifice. After all, if I offered you a mansion and a small mountain of gold if you worked out 10 hours a week would you take it? How much more should we as human beings be willing to give up temporary and imperfect love down here to attain eternal and perfect love with the help of God? A genuine believer in Jesus Christ must practice and teach that obedience to difficult commands and faith when things are not clear are the keys to the eternal life of joy that Jesus offers to every human being. This obedience is impossibly difficult for a human being without the promised divine help, but we trust that that help is available to everyone who seeks it and that heaven is worth any sacrifice.

Those who support homosexual marriage and fluid gender identification cannot conceive of the idea that Christians genuinely believe that the Bible is the Word of God. Because they think we are “making things up as we go along” instead of genuinely seeking to understand God’s will and God’s word, they think it is no big deal for us to interpret the Bible such that homosexuality is acceptable. In reality, however, Christians are following the path to true and eternal love laid out for us by our Lord and Saviour. We must stand for the sexual purity commanded by our Lord and resist the world’s siren call to accept homosexuality. To do anything else is to compromise the truth and betray our most deeply held beliefs.

First, I’m offended that this guy is talking about perfect love, something he’s had no chance to explore according to his own admissions. He has no definition of perfect love or at least has not shared it with the rest of us. What a daydreamer this guy is. He says any extreme of sacrifice is worth heaven yet he doesn’t know what heaven is, nobody does. I want to know what kind of mushrooms this guy puts in his omelets for breakfast. Still, heaven is worth any sacrifice. At least he thinks so according to his definitions of love and heaven. Unfortunately he never defined either one. I’ve not heard of god giving people the talent of mind reading so neither non-believers or believer should believe anything this guy is saying. He’s a fucking nutjob.

Oh, we can conceive of the idea that Christians genuinely believe the bible is the word of a god. The trouble is that because they do we think they are deluded or sick or crazy or ill. If homosexuality was not acceptable then why did the creator god make it so many animals exhibit this trait? I assume that by sexual purity laid out in the book he means that if you can afford 900 concubines as king, then that is okay. If your brother dies you have to service his widow and keep her and so on. His most deeply held beliefs are fucked. He has not read the book and does not think critically yet his voice among many others is out there for wanna-be believers to listen to. He is dangerous and stupid. You, my readers, I hope will reject this kind of blabbering outright, without a thought. That is what it deserves… on a good day.

Those of you who have read my ‘about me’ page know that “Sometimes I think the way I see the world is perhaps worth writing down.”

That view of the world is as present as ever when I read the posts of other bloggers. I want to know what they wrote and why they wrote it. It tells us something about them, or likely does. One of my favorite theist bloggers is Franks Cottage. His writing is different than a lot of theistic writings. He seems to stay on the positive perspective side of the debate. That he is a theist does not meant that I don’t find cause to stop and think when he writes. That said, Frank has posted recently on life before and after death focusing on the before part from his Christian perspective. Reading that gave me a few thoughts that I’d like to share here:

The entirety of his post is included and quoted but reformatted a bit for ease here.

I guess there are some atheists out there who believe that people of faith are just gritting their teeth and tolerating this nauseating existence before going on to unending glory in the life to come. But from my perspective as a follower of Jesus (whom serious Christians believe is God’s divine Son), atheists and Christians have “life before death” as a common belief. Let me make this as clear as possible: while life after death is of supreme importance, life BEFORE death is just as significant. How can I write that? Consider these words of Jesus, recorded in a section of the Bible called ‘John’: “I came to give life—life that is full and good.” He’s not talking about life after death; He’s talking about life RIGHT NOW. So what does that mean?

This premise is a promise that, as we’ll see, is not a promise of a wonderful life of prosperity

1. Life becomes full and good because you’ve join a worldwide movement of believers. So you don’t have to make a go of it solo. You can attend a church, read the Bible, regularly pray with (and for) others and support each other through good times and bad.

This indicates that Christians don’t want to do this life on their own, can’t do it on their own. They have to have social intereactions which echo their own beliefs and actions. There is nothing here that could not be accomplished in an Atheist church, outside of praying and which books you read. So here we see Christianity fulfilling basic human wants rather than doing something special this part is a requisite part of human social interaction. Nothing special here. You’d get much the same if you belonged to a D&D club.

2. Life becomes full and good because you have a new power that helps you set aside the meaningless, superficial priorities of our culture and focus on what’s truly important. So you are put on a path to stop worrying about whether you have a new car, the latest smartphone and the biggest flat-screen TV. You stop looking to your mate or your friends to give you happiness because you realize that happiness comes through following Jesus.

Here is a claim of a ‘new power’ that has no evidence for it. A power which most atheists seem to have or can have, I know I do. So this power being promised is not supernatural nor necessarily derived from a holy text. It’s just humans thinking in one way vs. a different way. That last bit where ‘You stop looking to your mate or your friends to give you happiness …’ is very interesting. You don’t need a god for this or a church or holy text. If you can’t manage this on your own a therapist can help you. This is not a special gift from a god, it is simply good and reasonable thinking. You do not and should not need a god to do this.

3. Life becomes full and good because you have a pathway to becoming truly generous. It’s no longer about getting a charitable tax break or seeking something in return when you give. It’s about being Christ’s ambassador in a world most of us are willing to admit isn’t doing very well.

Ahh, the old giving altruistically bit. Being religious does not make you charitable or good. Spend a couple of minutes searching for atheist charity on the Internet and you’ll see the folly of this #3 item. In fact, #3 here is rather insulting to those charitable non-believers.

4. Life become full and good when you realize that the 70-odd years most of us spend on this planet is merely a blip in time compared to the eternity Christ followers have in Heaven with Jesus. The blessing of that perspective means we no longer have to put so much stake in every good or bad thing that happens to us in this life. We see the bigger picture and it changes everything.

There it is, life is good because there is a promise of eternal life afterwards. Live this life for Jesus so you can live forever at his feet worshipping him and his pappa. That is, unless there is something wrong in that heaven and you want change, then you’ll get cast out. Going to heaven has not been shown to be a one way ticket and it’s hard to imagine what being there would be like if all your loved ones or friends are in hell being tortured for eternity by the very god you worship. This promised next life needs to be approached with logic and trepidation. The promise sounds good but you wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive, for a reason.

5. Life become full and good because you realize that Jesus died to make up for all the wrong things you’ve done and the right things you’ve failed to do. So the burden of guilt and shame is lifted from you; God sees you as He sees His Son: perfect in every way.

Well now, for this part you have to believe that this Jesus existed and died. It’s hard to come to grips with the fact that most of us do things which are not good at some point. Living with that requires a bit of thinking and attitude adjustment. The Christian’s like Frank think they can absolve themselves of responsibility and guilt by believing a story which says they are forgiven and will even get a reward while their friends and family are roasted in hell for eternity. Sounds selfish to me. Oh, I know. Frank and others are trying to share the free trip to heaven with us. I don’t know about you but I’m a little suspicious of the get out of jail free card given because I believe in the very god who built the jail just to torture me with if I don’t love him. It all seems a bit suspicious. One might stop to ponder at this point how well cows are treated before they are slaughtered for meat. They’ve been taught to trust their human masters who have made life easy for them, keep them healthy, feed them and so on… that small walkway to the new barn is not the stairway to heaven.

Now I’m not going to sugar-coat this and claim followers of Jesus float on a cloud of bliss. In another part of ‘John’, Jesus tells His followers “In this world you will have troubles. But be brave! I have defeated the world!” That means the world doesn’t automatically have the final say on your life. If you decide to follower Jesus, then HE has the final say. And that final say is glorious.

There it is, let me translate: This life is going to suck, sometimes it’s really going to suck. Your 2 year old might even be diagnosed with terminal cancer. Not to worry, if you believe in Jesus you’re promised a full and good life and there is the church to lean on when your mind can’t find the necessary impetus to even walk, they’ll support you and pray for you … and your child is still going to die of cancer before he can be saved by Jesus but hey, at least in the next life you’ll be worshipping the god that killed your kid and doomed him to eternal torture. That, that makes all the suffering worth it, don’t you think?

You have stopped by and said hello to them today, right? You probably should have if you did not. They can’t live without you and if you know they exist you can’t live without them.

Demon: an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell.

We usually do not think of demons as something we are responsible for. They instead are responsible for our bad behavior, bad luck, bad life. People talk about inner demons or personal demons as a way of saying that we are responsible for them, yet we are not responsible because it was the demon that made us do that thing or the other thing.

NOTE: There are habits we cannot easily control. If you have a substance related problem, that ‘demon’ is not just in your head. You will need professional help to get rid of it in all probability.

That warning is not to say that those who smoke can’t get rid of the habit without help or, for that matter, other addictions. Some people are stronger or more desperate than others. Such things vary from person to person. I don’t want to talk about those types of situations. Those situations are not simply in your head, there is a physical component that you cannot will to go away. Our brains are amazing but it is simply not a switch that you can turn on and off at will when there is a chemical component to your bad thinking. It should be noted that monkeys, dolphins, and in fact many mammals[1][2][3] have a penchant for using substances to experience an altered reality.

If you want to know what it takes to kill a bad habit with physical components, stop eating for 3 days. Drink water, get lots of sleep but do not eat. That will show you what a physical addiction can be like.

The astute among you will ask “if those people can have physical conditions why can’t mine be a physical condition?” and you are right to ask that. All these ‘personal demons’ have a common component – how we think and the behavior we exhibit based on how we think.

Do other people see your demons as harmless or pretty? Do they think you might be silly?

If your demon is harmless or pretty, is it really a demon? It is if it stops you from being the person that you wan to be. Let’s think about this for a minute. Without much effort I’ve talked about demons like they are an entity and not a thought pattern in your head or a behavior based on thoughts in your head. Let’s stop talking about them like they are external entities. Let’s stop laying the blame for our bad luck or bad lives on something that is not us.

Let’s not talk about major life issues or physical issues as demons. The demons we want to talk about are the small ones, the little buggers you keep tripping over as you go through life.

What people tend to call their demons are thought patterns or behavior patterns which they do not find easy to change and which bring them bad luck, bad life, bad fortune. Those demons are actually us. We are those demons despite something in us not wanting to be those demons. It is when we are tired of the demon that we change. Some might say “well, I don’t know how to change” and there is more than a grain of truth to that. Many of us form our bad thought patterns (and subsequent behavior patterns) based on the only frame of reference that we know – our lives. When our entire life has been filled with those bad thinking patterns and bad behavior patters just how is it that we are supposed to change?

This can quickly get off on the wrong garden path, so stay with me. We are not responsible for what other people do. We cannot change the past. If your bad thinking is based on one or both of those I have something to tell you. We can only be responsible for what we do ourselves. We can only change how we react to things in this moment. The past and the future are outside what we can change. We can only change how we act in this moment. Did that sink in? You can only be who you are in this moment. If you choose to be brave, this moment does not have to be based on anything in your past nor anything others think of you whether they actually do or you just worry that they do.

Most people are in some way afraid of their demons. I say this is exactly the wrong way to look at it. Grab your demon by the hand every day, dance, dance till you know their every move. Learn to lead the demon.

The continuous dance with your ‘demons’

You can learn to lead your demon if you truly want to be the dominant partner in the dance. When you refuse to dance, dance you will but the demon leads. But how are you to lead your demons? First you must know them, intimately. Not what they want you to think but what they don’t want you to think of them. You have to recognize when they are trying to lead, and change the tune.

Hey MAL, that’s all good to put in a blog but how does that help me?

When you lead the dance, the movements are yours, even when it appears the demon is leading in those times when you choose to let your bad thinking lead. We grow up and many of us learn bad thinking from people that we trust and there is no certain way to learn new habits or forget the past learning. It’s not like one day you wake up and know how life is supposed to be and all the bad thinking is suddenly gone. No, like it was as you were a child, such learning takes time and practice. Time and practice.

Hey MAL, how am I supposed to get time and practice?

Every day, your ‘personal demons’ will come to dance. When they arrive, practice. Time happens on it’s own.

But what do I practice?

Do exactly what your demon doesn’t want. Soon you’ll see small victories, then larger, and before you know it you’ll have forgotten all about that demon. You know what your demon wants or you would not have compartmentalized it to a demon. All you have to do is treat that behavior or thought pattern as if it would kill you or make you deathly sick. When you are more afraid of giving in to the demon than what the demon might have you do, it will not be long before you forget the demon altogether.

Reflection and honest assessment of what displeases you about your behavior (your demon) is required. Sometimes that is kind of nasty. Do it anyway. If you can’t be honest with yourself that demon will never leave. Practice long enough and you’ll see that demon trying to get back into your life. Once you’ve gotten rid of them it’s not hard to keep them at bay.

Hey MAL, what should I tell others about my demons?

Don’t do that. It’s a personal war you have to wage. Sure, you might seek therapy help but your therapist will not dance with your demons, only you will. Therapists offer help and guidance but you still have to do the dancing no matter how much you pay the therapist.

There are things which cannot be mitigated by desire to fight them however all of us dance with the demons that can be. You are strong enough to change your behaviors. When you find that you simply can’t do so, seek help. Most of our troubles are just a matter of how we dance with the demons. Even for those whose demons are not imagined but physical, they deal with the imagined demons too. The imagined demons can be beaten. You can change your behaviors. You can do what the demons don’t want you to do. In this case, what does not kill you does make you stronger when you are dancing and trying to take the lead.